Consumers are offered a large number of food products that have been prepared and/or treated in numerous ways for considerations such as convenience, storage, stability, and organoleptic considerations, e.g., taste or feel during mastication, and appearance. Food producers are continuously seeking ways to differentiate their products from others by means of coloring, flavoring, design and/or other characteristics.
It is highly desirable to produce a product that has a 3-dimensional shape to mimic, e.g. the shape of well known images or characters. It is also important, as mentioned above, that the products simultaneously have the requisite aesthetic properties, e.g. taste and mouthfeel. Such products are desirable because they provide excellent product recognition. Various three-dimensional confections and candies are commercially available.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,108,772 discloses a puffable gellatinized dough pellets which pop upon microwave heating in a consumer microwave oven. The pellets include an outer methylcellulose skin or casing of sufficient tensile strength to allow buildup of internally generated steam pressure upon microwave heating. Upon sufficient buildup of steam pressure, the skin fails suddenly, allowing the pellet to puff explosively thereby simultaneously causing an audible popping sound. The pellets are prepared from starchy compositions such as cooked farinaceous dough or dehulled popcorn.
Molding processes have been used in the plastics industry to produce numerous products of varying size and shape. Such processes have also been used to make biodegradable articles from foodstuffs. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,320,669 to Lim et al. discloses a biodegradable thermoplastic composition made of cereal grain that is treated with an organic solvent to extract lipids that may undergo undesirable reactions during thermal processing of the composition. The cereal grain may further be treated with a cross-linking agent that binds the proteins and/or starches together such that the resultant product has improved water resistance compared to articles made without the cross-linking agent. The thermoplastic composition may then be formed, e.g. by injection molding, into an article of desired shape.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,279,658 to Aung discloses a composition said to be suitable for forming shaped articles, e.g. biodegradable packaging material, comprising a mixture of flour, starch, and water. The flour and starch may be obtained from natural sources, e.g. cereal grains. The mixture heated and mixed under a sufficient pressure, temperature and moisture content and for a sufficient period of time that when the pressure is decreased the mixture expands to form a composition which is rigid when cooled and stable over a predetermined temperature. A shaped article, e.g. a may be formed from the composition by injecting the composition into a molding press and forming the composition into a shaped article.
Additional puffable food products and processes for preparing the food products are desirable. The present invention is directed to such products and processes.